Part 67 (1/2)
”She does,” said Church, ”the feed is leaking to the Internet.”
”s.h.i.+t. You got to find some way to-”
”Bug is close to cracking her system and is confident he will be able to jam all the cameras. I will alert you when that happens.”
”Make it fast. We're going after Mother Night and I don't want her gloating to the world.”
”Captain, listen to me,” said Church, ”we're not interested in an arrest. Not this time.”
”Preaching to the choir.”
”Then good hunting, Captain. And G.o.d bless.”
He was gone and I looked at the lobby. Maybe I was asking for help for something that was already helpless. But d.a.m.n it, this was still a fight. There were still more people uninfected than transformed.
And I needed to get to Mother Night. G.o.dd.a.m.n it, I needed to look into her eyes and determine for myself if there was any shoe left to drop. Was this slaughter what she wanted or did she still have one last game to play?
”We need to get to the elevators,” I yelled. ”Clear me a path. Right now.”
Bunny swapped in a new drum and everyone fished for fresh magazines. The elevators were thirty yards away. They might as well have been on the dark side of the moon.
Even so, we had to try.
We raised our weapons at the seething crowd and began firing.
I would like to say that the only people we killed were infected. I would dearly love that to be true.
But that would only be a lie.
Chapter One Hundred and Nineteen.
Grand Hyatt Hotel 109 East Forty-second Street New York City Sunday, September 1, 4:04 p.m.
As the door burst open, Ludo Monk s.n.a.t.c.hed up the pistol, turned, fired without aiming. The figure coming through the doorway moved with blinding speed. There was a second shot. A third.
A scream.
No, screams.
A woman's scream. High, shrill, filled with pain and terror.
And his own voice. Nearly as high, screeching so loud that the sound of it burned away the clouds in his mind, leaving him clearheaded for a moment. No intruding voices, no peculiar patterns of thought. In that moment he could see and hear and understand everything with a clarity that was so rare and ...
And lovely.
It was beautiful. Never once in his entire life had there been such fidelity of vision and perception. Never before had something stilled the voices in his head. Not even the pills did it this completely.
Monk tried to understand what was happening.
He turned his head and it moved very loosely on his neck. Too loosely. He knew that his neck was not broken, yet the muscles were strangely slack.
”What-?” he asked.
A figure moved from left to right in front of him. Tall, slender, female, and familiar. He didn't know her name, did he?
Something ...
Something musical.
He was sure of it.
”M-Mother-?” he asked, hoping it was her. Needing it to be her.
There was no answer. Not to his question. But the woman with the musical name was speaking. Shouting.
Monk turned his head again, trying to see who was talking. Why was it so hard to remember who was in the room with him? He knew that he should know this. It was just a few moments ago.
A few moments.
Everything had changed in those moments.
His mind became clearer and yet he could not fill it with names or meaning.
The woman was kneeling now and he saw her bend down over something ...
No.
Over someone.
Another woman.
A woman who seemed to be lying on a red blanket.
Or floating in a red pool.
Monk could not tell which, but as he watched the blanket or pool it grew larger and larger.
”Mother?” he asked again.
The women ignored him. Neither was his mother.
He heard the tall woman yelling something.
”Junie! Junie, stay with me. Stay with me...”